And ending it late, I guess – I started writing this post on Thursday and am only finishing now on Tuesday back-to-work day.
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The other day in an email my brother said I work too hard. So today (Thursday) I decided to start the July 4 weekend early. I am taking Friday off, and I turned off my work computer at 3:45 today. Since July 4 is a Sunday, I am being given Monday July 5 off. The University is closed and some major systems are actually offline for upgrading. Sounds like just as big a hint to disconnect as the bro’s email.
And I guess I’ve been successful at that disconnecting stuff, since now it’s that aforementioned Monday off, and I am still working on this same post.
Here’s what my Monday looked like, lying on the couch, mesmerized by leaf shadows.
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And I just figured out that the monitor on my new computer is in the wrong place for my lineless bifocals – the correction for seeing the screen clearly is in the bottom of my lenses, so I can either tip my head up and get a crick in my neck, or raise my glasses to the proper place with my thumb, and type one-handed. Ooooh, going glasses-less also seems to work.
So anyways, how have I been spending my long weekend? Let’s see.
Thursday I got a CSA box that included a lot of broccoli, so I made stir-fried broccoli & peanut sauce, based on a recipe in Mollie Katzen’s Enchanted Broccoli Forest (minus the tofu), that I used to make a lot when I had (older, like middle-highs school age) kids in the house because they would eat it with lots of Siracha, and we ate it with brown rice. And Siracha. When John & Megan came home from the bars on Saturday night, they ate up some of the leftovers – so I guess my kids still like it.
Friday I went along on Mark’s lakeshore path walk, where we get coffee at Ancora. We picked up some bagels, too. I made some sourdough discard blueberry muffins – actually I think I made them Thursday afternoon, after I bailed from work early, and before making the broccoli with peanut sauce. My CSA box also had cabbage, the cute, pointy, Caraflex kind, which is tender and good raw, so I started some cabbage and grated carrots and chopped green onion wilting before our walk so we could have cheese & slaw dogs for dinner. We got dill in the box too, so I made dill dip, and we had veggies and dip. We’re going to have the same dinner tonight. (Tuesday)
John & Megan arrived late Friday night, they’d eaten at Culvers, and we weren’t planning on doing anything that night anyways; they were meeting up with a bunch of friends to go float down the Sugar River, and had to be in the parking lot of a local bar at 8:00 AM Saturday to catch the bus, so they just had to be here before then.
On Sunday I was planning a little backyard picnic, so on Saturday I cooked a lot for that, but didn’t take any pictures. I was planning:
- dill dip and veggies;
- hummus & home made flat bread;
- goat cheese with leftovers of some quick tomato sauce I made a bit ago, enhanced with chopped sun-dried tomatoes dumped over the top, and baguette slices;
- salami & crackers & cheese;
- lime white chocolate blondies – my recipe;
- and brown butter rice krispie treats – that other Deb’s recipe.
And I also made banana muffins with a dab of sweetened cream cheese baked onto the top, and broccoli quiche for Sunday morning. I didn’t take any pictures of the quiche but it looked a lot like this from a year ago spring, minus the croutons. The crust was flaky but a little pale, still having trouble with my won’t hold a temp oven.
On Saturday morning I drove the kids to the parking lot and got back in time for me & Mark to bike to the Market, where we bought dip veggies: sugar snaps, carrots, grape tomatoes, (expensive, $4 for two) cucumbers. We also got potatoes for general purposes, and some fancy cheese that I didn’t put out on Sunday.
I biked to Metcalfe’s and got a few other things that we couldn’t get at the market, like red bell peppers. Then I made zucchini pickles. They were pickled enough to eat by Sunday and tasted really good with the hummus & flat bread.
The kids came back from floating around 5:00, and I broke out the dill dip and crackers and baguette and a little thing of leek confit. They got here right after the banana muffins came out of the oven, but didn’t have any. I mixed a Tom Collins for me, they took off to watch the Bucks game at the Echo Tap, and I made a taco casserole with chorizo and ground turkey and refried beans from the freezer that had seemed kind blah when I first made them, but improved by the freezing.
John & Megan’s friends Cory & Hannah brought them & their coolers back from the floating. Cory is one of the kids who ate lunch here everyday when they were in high school and spent many Saturday nights crashed in the basement. Hannah is Megan’s friend from high school. They’re getting married in September, in Milwaukee, where they own a house in Bay View. I wasn’t sure but they confirmed that we are invited, so that’s something nice to look forward to. John & Megan are standing up in the wedding and John says his suit is sharp.
John’s contention is the Bucks don’t get no respect, although the buses here in Madison all say “Go Bucks” right now. There definitely was not much coverage of the game in the Sunday morning papers, neither Milwaukee or Madison, but I thought that was more due to the sorry state of newspapers, that there aren’t really early & late editions anymore, so since the game ended late, no coverage until two days later. As in this pic that John deemed much better didn’t come until the Monday paper. Mark says there are still are early & late editions, we just only get the early in Madison. And there was a story on NPR tonight about the Deer District outside the Fiserv Forum, that even has its own website.
This week is going to be a jigsaw puzzle of using up leftovers. We had a bunch of stuff that pre-dated the picnic party, like a few pork meatballs in a garlic-ketchup sauce, brown rice and the aforementioned broccoli with peanut sauce, and zucchini risotto, that the kids ate some of, but left enough for me on Monday to make arancini with bits of provolone left from Sunday’s cheese board rolled inside.
The broccoli that I’d had outside with dip in the heat on Sunday seemed a bit vexed by that, so I fried it in garlic butter and red pepper flakes and ate it with the last of the broccoli in peanut sauce over the brown rice. Mark had the meatballs on top of his rice, and we both ate arancini.
One fun thing was that one of the neighbors brought a variant of my goat cheese with tomato stuff on top – feta broiled in tomato sauce with capers. So, next up in the leftover puzzle I think will be a pasta with a sauce made from those cheeses.
And though we did hear some booms & bangs of fireworks on Sunday night, we didn’t watch any, not even on TV. I admired these from @shoshibuya
And oh yea, we bought flowers at the market Saturday – our favorite flower guy gave us a bit of a deal because he thought it wasn’t quite as large as his normal bunches – and they are a bit droopy already today. There’re little daisy floaters in the water.
